


Welcome (back) to the Velvet Room

by dirtbagtrashcat



Category: Persona 5
Genre: BDSM, Dreams, Enthusiastic Consent, Erotica, Goro Akechi is dead, Horror, Horror Elements, M/M, Nightmares, Porn, Porn With Plot, Power Play, Power bottom Akechi, Smut, Timeskip, a spooky mystery, but it's also kind of a mystery???, cognitive realms, college age Akira Kurusu, cut me some slack i'm experimenting, fantasies, it ain't polite but i assure you that everyone is having a nice time, or at least that's what everyone thinks, shuake, sort of a fucky perverse scene, the boys have a lot of anger to work out, vanilla persona 5 spoilers, velvet room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:26:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24158830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtbagtrashcat/pseuds/dirtbagtrashcat
Summary: Akira hasn’t watched Akechi die in his dreams for at least a month. So when he opens his eyes to find the Detective Prince standing over him, he can’t help but tense up a little.“Hmm,” Akechi says appraisingly, looking him up and down with a critical squint. Akira looks down at himself. Strange: he’s wearing the black-and-white uniform of the Velvet Room.“It’s not as though I have anything against stripes,” Akechi says, with a wry gleam, “but that’s not how I want you. Change it.”Akira smirks, but complies. A ripple of blue flame licks at the cuff of his pants -- races up his legs, caresses his chest, burns away the thin scratchy fabric and conjures in its place the heavy solidity of an outfit that he knows better than the body beneath: a long black tailcoat; a high-necked waistcoat; bright red gloves.Akechi’s lips peel back, baring a predatory smile full of pointed teeth. “There you are,” he purrs._____Several years after watching Goro Akechi die in Shido's Palace, Akira starts having strange dreams.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 66
Kudos: 529





	1. The dreams are back

**Author's Note:**

> PSA: Akechi and Akira have a lot of repressed hurt and anger! As a result, the dynamics in this (mature-rated / sexually explicit) fic will frequently be violent and not-altogether-healthy. I am not trying to glorify toxic relationships (this situation is far from glorious), but as a person with anger issues & fairly self-destructive coping mechanisms, this is a cathartic space for me to explore. If it makes you uncomfortable, please feel free to read something else! 
> 
> PSA #2: this shit's gonna get pretty pornographic. If that yucks you out, steer clear!

Goro Akechi has been dead for years -- for so many years that Akira can finally, _occasionally_ sleep through the night.

For the first year after he watched Akechi die, the nightmares were unceasing. Every time Akira’s eyelids fell shut, Akechi waited for him in the dark behind his eyes: sometimes jeering and cruel, sometimes brittle and fragile and hurting, but _always_ disappointed in him.

Some nights Akira sat in a windowless room with his hands bound behind his back and waited for Akechi to show up and kill him -- except that when Akechi pulled the trigger it was _his_ head that the bullet struck, leaving a ragged hole that wept bright crimson down his pale face. Some nights Akira fought him in the engine room, assembling and re-assembling his words to find the right arrangement that would finally de-escalate, finally win Akechi over and save him from himself. Some nights he fought Akechi in Mementos, except that the glove he threw at Akira wasn’t a glove at all, it was Akechi’s own dead hand, pallid and bloodless and grey.

But life keeps happening, even when you wish it wouldn’t. Akira moves back home for one miserable, disorientingly banal year. He doesn’t hang out with his old friends, the ones who stopped talking to him after his arrest; and he doesn’t make any new ones, either. He works part-time on school nights to afford express tickets to Tokyo on the weekends, and he counts down the days until he can go back where he belongs.

He applies to school in Tokyo and moves into a cluttered little flat with Ryuji, with a pull-out couch for Ann to sleep when she’s working in town. Some nights, when the crying and shaking becomes too much to bear, he climbs into Ryuji's bed and curls up against the warm solidity of his back; and Ryuji, sunshine boy that he is, never pushes him away.

Akira thinks about studying politics, but he isn’t cut out for it: too many staring eyes without the security of a mask to hide behind. He drops out of school and works the counter at a nearby coffeeshop instead. The money’s not great, but he likes the quiet.

Akira adapts. He adjusts. He copes. He doesn’t move on, exactly, but he does keep marching forward, which more or less amounts to the same thing.

##

Akira hasn’t watched Akechi die for at least a month. So when he opens his eyes to find the Detective Prince standing over him, he can’t help but tense up a little.

“Hmm,” Akechi says appraisingly, looking him up and down with a critical squint. Akira looks down at himself. Strange: he’s wearing the black-and-white uniform of the Velvet Room.

“It’s not as though I have anything against stripes,” Akechi says, with a wry gleam, “but that’s not how I want you. Change it.”

Akira smirks, but complies. A ripple of blue flame licks at the cuff of his pants -- races up his legs, caresses his chest, burns away the thin scratchy fabric and conjures in its place the heavy solidity of an outfit that he knows better than the body beneath: a long black tailcoat; a high-necked waistcoat; bright red gloves.

Akechi’s lips peel back, baring a predatory smile full of pointed teeth.

“ _There_ you are,” he says, with satisfaction. He stalks forward till he stands only inches away from where Akira sits, and then he folds downward, onto his knees.

“Akechi?” Akira asks hoarsely. Akechi’s lip curls into a supercilious sneer.

“Come now, Joker,” he purrs, pulling himself closer and skating his palms up Joker’s thighs. “Let us not play games, shall we? We’ve both wanted this for a long time, have we not?”

Akira keeps bracing himself for the inevitable ironic twist -- the morbid turn that will contort this dream into a nightmare. Akechi will look up and Akira will see a bleeding hole in the middle of his forehead; or else his skin will fall away, leaving just a grinning skull.

Akechi looks up and Akira flinches, but instead of a mask of death, it’s just Akechi, lips parted, pupils wide, eyes blazing with hunger.

“Joker,” Akechi growls, his voice rough with unmet desire. He rears up to rub his cheek along the hard line of Akira’s groin, and Akira’s cock turns to fucking granite. “ _Please._ ”

“You’re dead,” Akira tells him, but weakly. He can feel his hips twitch slightly, straining against the steely constraint of his own self-control. “Isn’t this, um… too fucked up?”

Akechi sneers at him.

“It’s a dream, you _simpleton_ ,” he says witheringly. “A free pass. Are you really so determined to deprive yourself, even in sleep? I suppose I’ll simply have to _convince you_ ,” he purrs, opening his mouth and pressing it against the bulge in Akira’s pants. Akechi runs his tongue up the length of his cock, _moans_ into it, and Akira can feel a high, keening whine slip from his throat. At the sound, Akechi smiles like a crocodile.

“I knew you wanted me,” he breathes, licking and sucking at the growing wet spot on Akira’s pants. “I could feel your eyes on me and I _liked_ it, I never wanted you to look away.”

Akira can’t look away. Akechi’s as pretty and poised as ever. Watching his eyes crease and his jaw go slack with feral, lascivious hunger feels all the more perverse for his delicate, princely features.

“I always did want to ruin you,” Akira breathes, hot with shame.

“ _Nngh_ ,” Akechi moans into his crotch, and Akira shudders.

“You thought you were so much smarter than me,” he growls, his voice ragged and urgent. “Looked straight at me and smiled while you planned out the logistics of my _murder_. Thought you were so fucking smart, and I was so fucking stup-- _nnngh_ ,” he gasps, breathless, because Akechi has unzipped the fly of his pants and is tonguing the thin gauzey cotton of his boxers, moaning softly and grinding his own crotch helplessly against Akira’s ankle.

“ _God_ ,” Akechi whines, and he catches the band of Akira’s boxer briefs in his teeth and pulls it down. Akira’s cock snags on the waistband and then bounces up again, slapping obscenely against the smooth whiteness of Akechi’s cheek. “ _God_ , Joker, I wanted to do this for so long, I’ve pictured it so many times--”

And Akira can’t take it any longer; he palms the back of Akechi’s head and grabs a fistful of his hair and shoves him into his crotch. Akechi _moans_ as he laps at the head of Akira’s cock with the tip of his tongue, runs his hot mouth up the length of his shaft.

Akechi’s eyes flit upward to stare challengingly at Akira.

“You want it?” he asks derisively, almost _pityingly_.

“ _Please_ ,” Akira begs, any pretense of control thrown to the winds, “please, Akechi _please, I need it_ \--”

And Akechi opens his pretty mouth and wraps his lips tight around Akira’s shaft, slides the length of it into his mouth until the head of his cock rams the back of his throat, and when Akechi moans around it, Akira can feel it vibrate through his whole body, and now there’s no room for thought left at all.

Akira can feel his hips spasm, thrusting into Akechi’s throat till he gags and chokes, till tears stream from his bright brown eyes. He can see Akechi rubbing his own little bulge helplessly against his shin, a series of twitching, spasmodic little thrusts; can hear himself grunting, panting, muttering a stream of filth:

“Fucking _desperate_ for it aren’t you, prettyboy, look like a prince but we both know what you’re really like, begging for my cock like a--”

And then Akechi bears down, forcing the head of Akira’s cock down his throat; and he swallows, a press of hot tight wet warmth, and Akira’s words are strangled by his own mewling urgency.

“Don’t stop,” he begs, hips jerking, “please, Akechi _please, please don’t st-- nnngh_ ,” he wails, as he cums helplessly, explosively down Akechi’s throat.

Akechi swallows, swallows again; he closes his eyes, forehead taut with wordless bliss. After a moment, Akira becomes aware that he’s still holding the back of Akechi’s head, pressing his face into his crotch. Hastily he pulls his hand back, and Akechi slides off of him, licks his lips and shudders.

Akira rakes his fingers through his hair, utterly spent. From the floor of the cell, the Detective Prince stares up at him, prideful and derisive.

“And you’re supposed to be the _nice_ one,” he sneers. Akira flushes.

“Well,” he says sheepishly. He feels _reborn_ , shattered like eggshell and then taped back together. “Like you said, it’s… just a dream. Free pass, right?”

Akechi smiles like a wolf.

“That’s right,” he agrees, all mocking approval, underlied by a quiet gleam of malice. “That’s a good boy.”

Akira flops back on the bed, bangs his head against the prison wall behind him. Akechi snickers, and Akira wrinkles his nose at him.

“God, I’m pathetic,” he sighs. Akechi prowls up the side of the bed, stretches out beside him.

“Glad to hear that we’re on the same page,” he says contemptuously. He flicks at Akira’s ear with his tongue, sending another shudder of longing through him. “You always were a lost cause.”

Unthinking, Akira turns toward him, buries his face in the nape of his neck and breathes in the scent of him: sticky and earthy, like sweat and cum and sawdust. He can feel Akechi stiffen under him.

“Come on,” he says teasingly. “Free pass, right? I miss you like hell, Akechi, so just… let me have this.”

Reluctantly, Akechi relaxes.

“You don’t know _what_ you miss,” he says coldly, looking away even as he leans into Akira’s touch. “You don’t miss me. The man you miss never existed at all; he was only a part I played, and you the simpering, sentimental fool who fell for it.”

“Maybe,” Akira sighs, pulling him in tighter. “Yeah, maybe. I still miss him.”

Akechi rolls his eyes.

“Then there’s no helping you,” he sighs, and they subside into a companionable silence.

“I gotta say,” Akira starts to say, after a few quiet moments. “I’m liking this more than my usual--”

A sound catches his ear: a distant chiming, tinkling and harmonic. When he glances toward Akechi, the dethroned Detective Prince is listening too, his forehead creased, head tilted attentively.

“You hear it too?” Akira starts to ask, before a flicker of motion catches his eye. Akira can see something hyper-blue -- higher-saturation than the rest of the room, like everything else is rendered in greyscale -- fluttering nearer.

The butterfly alights a few feet to his right, on the lock of a barred door that Akira somehow failed to notice.

“Trickster,” it chimes, in a reverberant sigh; and though the sound could have been soothing, it fills Akira with a sickening, roiling dread. “ _You should not be here--_ ”

And he wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel pretty squirrelly about posting this kind of stuff online, but I honestly believe that sex can be an interesting platform through which to explore self-conception and identity -- it's a space where inhibitions fade, and where it becomes easier to voice a lot of the stuff that you'd usually opt to suppress. I feel that this kind of play *can* be healthy when all involved parties are enthusiastically consenting and mutual respect is assured -- if it's not your thing i totally respect that, but pLEASE feel free to point your attention elsewhere cause boy will I fixate endlessly over your hurtful comments >_<


	2. The house wins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Akira's dreams, he and Akechi take a quick trip down memory lane.

The next time Akira closes his eyes, Akechi is waiting. This time, Akira’s ready for him.

“Come on,” Akira growls, grabbing Akechi by the collar and yanking him close. “I’ve got somewhere I want to go.”

“By all means,” Akechi drawls, looking down with amusement as his fine white suit -- his _first_ Phantom Thief costume, the one he wore when he still pretended to be their ally -- materializes around him. “You wanted to fuck the Prince?” he asks, incredulous, and more than a little contemptuous. “Well, there’s no accounting for taste.”

“Shut up,” Akira says roughly, screwing up his brow and closing his eyes. “Give me a second, I want to see if I can…”

The blue light lifts, brightening to a thin, tinny white; the clammy stone underfoot softens into red-and-black checked carpet. The prison walls pull away, and the cramped cell yawns open until the two of them stand in the lobby of Sae Nijiima’s cognitive casino. Silhouettes materialize around them: the rest of the team, in full Phantom Thief regalia.

“Kinky,” Akechi says lightly, looking around at the others. Akira glares at him.

“Crow,” he says darkly, advancing a pace. Then he smiles, a thin veil of courtesy that does nothing to hide the surge of malice beneath it -- so black a fury that Akechi actually trips away from him.

“Ah,” Akechi breathes, and then gathers his composure. “Ah… Yes, Joker?”

“I know this is your first time in a Palace,” Akira growls. “You must be overwhelmed. Are you holding up okay?”

Under his red bird’s mask, Akechi’s eyes flash with mirth.

“That’s terribly kind of you,” he says courteously, with an elegant little half-bow. “I’m awfully grateful for your consideration, Joker. Perhaps I should call you Joker- _senpai_ ,” he adds, laying it on thick. “Given that you’re my senior, albeit in this place alone.”

“I don’t want to push you too hard, _kohai_ ,” Akira tells him, still smiling through that hollow, hungry stare. “If you need to catch your breath, why don’t I show you to a safe room? I’ve got some medicine that will only work there.”

“Well, I suppose that I wouldn’t mind a quick respite; though of course I _can_ carry on, if need be. I should hate to slow our progress--”

“That’s all right,” Akira says flatly. “Queen can lead the team. You can handle it, right Queen?”

“That’s right,” Makoto agrees seriously, stepping forward. Her mouth doesn’t move, but her voice continues to echo around them. _You’d better know what you’re doing_ , it says worriedly. _Gathering intel is one thing, but don’t push your luck. You know he’s dangerous._

“You sure, leader?” Ryuji adds, looking anxious. _I don’t want you alone with him_ , he thinks, and his concern reverberates through the space. _You know what he’s planning._

Akira gives them a cocky grin.

“Don’t worry, Skull,” he tells him, and winks. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

##

“So they _all_ knew?” Akechi asks quietly, as the air around them shudders. Slowly but steadily, the casino lights flicker and fade; the walls close in until the two stand alone in the dingy dark of a safe room. “All along? To be honest, it’s hard to conceive of… Nijiima-san may be relatively controlled, but Takamaki-san and Sakamoto-kun are no actors.”

“They’re better than _you_ ,” Akira says harshly. “Your little performance was transparent as glass. It was pathetic watching you prance around like a hero, using all those pretty words like you actually _gave_ a shit about me.”

Akechi doesn’t flinch exactly, but he shifts his stance; carries his weight a little heavier.

“I _did_ like you, Kurusu-kun” he says quietly. “Not that it matters. I made my choice. If you turned back time, I’d make it again.”

Akira bares his teeth.

“Suppose I’d come onto you,” he growls, advancing until he’s backed Akechi into a corner. “Suppose that I’d--”

Akira hesitates. Tentatively, with startling tenderness, he brushes a lock of hair from Akechi’s brow. Akira trails two fingers down his cheek, tilts Akechi’s chin up, pulls his face toward his; and he kisses him.

For a moment, Akechi is frozen, stock-still as a rabbit staring down a fox. And then with an urgency that seems to surprise even him, he melts into Akira’s touch, kissing him fiercely, needily. One uncertain hand flits toward Akira’s neck; hesitates before alighting on the back of his head, slim fingers tangling into Akira’s curls. Akira’s hands skate up Akechi’s back, cradle the back of his neck like he’s something fragile, something precious.

Akira pulls away, takes a breath. His vision is full of Akechi: warm brown eyes still half-shut, lips parted, rapt with hunger and yearning and just a shade of melancholy.

“What if I’d told you that I loved you?” Akira asks him recklessly, and the breath huffs out of Akechi sharply, as if he’d been punched. “Would it have changed anything?”

Akechi considers it.

“No,” he says neutrally, after a measured pause. “I suppose that it wouldn’t have. I had my orders. My personal preference didn’t play into the matter at all.”

Akira’s mouth hardens.

“God, you’re such a piece of _shit_ ,” he says roughly, shoving Akechi so hard his skull rattles against the wall behind him. Akechi snorts.

“Well, I could have told you that.”

“Your _personal preference_ ,” Akira repeats mockingly. “As if you even cared _that_ much. Why did you even hang out with me? Was it just, like… some kind of _private joke_? Or are you just a fucking sadist? Does it get you off, playing with your food before you finish it off?”

Akechi considers that too.

“Well,” he says quietly. “To accomplish my goals, I needed your cooperation; and for that, I would need to earn your affection, at the very least; or--”

“So everyone’s a means to an end,” Akira asks furiously. Akechi lifts one shoulder, looks away.

“I believe that much has been made quite clear,” he says, with an ironic little smile. Akira grabs Akechi’s chin roughly and twists it, forces him to face him.

“Okay, _Crow_ ,” he says derisively. “You want to earn my affection?” He lays his other hand over the crown of Akechi’s head, shoves him roughly to his knees. “Why don’t you work for it.”

Akechi is all too eager to comply. He fumbles with the zipper of Akira’s pants, hands shaking, until Akira shoves him away and unzips it himself.

“Go on,” Akira tells him, settling his weight onto the table behind him.

“What if your teammates were to return?” Akechi asks insolently, giving Akira a cheeky stare. Akira snorts.

“Yeah, that would be _embarrassing_ ,” he says, not moving. “You’d better hurry up then.”

Akechi crawls toward him, looks Akira straight in the eye and opens his mouth wide, tongue lolling obscenely, until at last Akira grabs a fistful of his hair and shoves his head forward, thrusting his cock into Akechi’s waiting mouth.

“ _Nngh_ ,” Akira breathes, blissful, and then mutters something unintelligible. Akechi’s head draws back; the head of Akira’s cock slides out of his throat with a _pop_.

“What was that?” he asks delicately. Akira’s lip curls.

“I said, I knew you were good for something,” he growls, and shoves himself back down Akechi’s throat.

“Stupid fucking bastard,” Akira mutters to him, “you-- _nnngh_ \-- if you’d just fucking _told_ me, we could’ve ruined Shido together; but _no_ , you _had_ to go it alone; no one could ever hope to understand the great Goro Akechi, dumbest fucking slut in all Japan.”

“Mrrnf,” Akechi moans, garbled by the cock ramming roughly against the back of his throat. Akira thrusts harder, presses Akechi’s face so tight against him that his pert nose is flattened against his pelvis and he _chokes_ , tearful and breathless. A brief flicker of shame washes over Akira, and he loosens his grip.

“You,” he says gruffly. “Are you okay?”

Akechi looks up at him, electric with contempt.

“Oh, do you feel _bad_?” he asks mockingly, wiping a cord of drool from his chin. “You know, I laughed when I killed you. You looked so _stupid_ ,” he purrs, “slack-jawed and helpless and bloodied, like something out of a _fantasy_.”

“ _Fuck_ you,” Joker snarls, and he spits on him. Akechi catches it square on the cheek. His face goes slack with pleasure, and his mouth lolls open.

“Ngh,” he moans wordlessly, gesturing at his mouth until Akira gives him what he wants, rams Akechi’s throat till his eyes cross and his chin is drenched with spittle.

“You’re fucking sick, you know that?” Akira asks him, disbelieving. “You’re a -- _mnnngh_ ,” he pants, “a real fucking piece of work.”

Akechi moans around him, twitching and shuddering, and Akira can feel the pleasure crescendo.

“I’m -- oh god Akechi oh _god_ \--”

Akechi’s pretty face is already streaked with phlegm and contorted with lust but it’s not enough, Akira wants to _ruin_ him; he pulls out just in time to finish all over the Prince’s delicate face, catching him clear in the eye with a ropey stream of cum.

Akechi mews something small and high and unintelligible.

“Say it again,” Akira orders, breathless, and with one eye closed and his eyelid streaked with white, Akechi smiles.

“ _Thank you_ ,” he breathes again, louder this time. Akira grins.

“Christ, but you’re twisted.”

“Speak for yourself,” Akechi shoots back. Akira shrugs, unbothered. In the circumstances, it’d be hard to deny.

Akira looks down at the bulge in Akechi’s pants and wonders briefly, insanely, if it would be polite of him to reciprocate. He used to daydream about sucking Akechi off, before he found out what the Prince had in store for him.

Sharp as ever, Akechi spots Akira’s stare; follows it to its target, then turns away and scowls.

“Don’t worry about me,” he says darkly. “I hardly deserve to feel _good_ , now, do I?”

Akira’s head tilts.

“I don’t know,” he says, and means it. “We’ve all done things we regret.”

Akechi laughs bitterly, and Akira’s head tilts the other way. It’s beyond strange. He’d assumed he was just -- _processing his grief_ , or something, in his own fucked-to-hell, sexually repressed, depraved sort of way. But the Akechi he sees in his dreams is almost _too_ real. It’s downright unsettling.

“Akechi,” Akira says softly.

Akechi swipes at his closed eye with the back of his hand. It comes away streaked with cum, and he snickers.

“Kurusu-kun,” he shoots back, looking coolly up at him through his one open eye. Akira frowns.

“This… isn’t real, right?” he asks plaintively. Akechi sneers.

“You’re asking me if your pathetic little wet dream about your reviled nemesis is _real_?”

“You’re not my nemesis,” Akira mutters sullenly. “You’re -- you were my _friend_ , Akechi. Or -- my rival, maybe.”

Akechi glares, caught between confusion and contempt.

“I was your _murderer_ ,” he says coldly. “How’s that? Is that better for you?”

Akira mutters something, and Akechi rolls his eyes again.

“ _What was that_?” he asks. Akira meets his gaze rebelliously.

“I said, _attempted_ murderer,” he says sulkily.

Akechi actually laughs.

“Goodness, but you _are_ twisted, aren’t you?” he asks wryly. “And they say _I_ have issues. At least _I_ don’t dream of getting sucked off by my own killer.”

“Don’t you?” Akira asks, his tone leaden. Akechi blinks at him, startled.

“Kurusu-kun,” he says, with surprising gentleness. “You didn’t kill me.”

“I didn’t save you, either,” Akira says bitterly. “Same fucking difference.”

Akechi tilts his head. For the first time since Akira got here, he looks simply -- curious.

“You don’t really believe--” he starts to say, and then the light flickers again -- turns blue and milky and strange. Akechi squints up at it, disoriented.

“You can see it too, right?” Akira asks him. “It’s weird. It’s almost like--”

He stops. There’s something happening to his vision: a smear of darkness taking shape. Its edges waver, solidifying steadily into something like a silhouette, stooped and twisted, with a long, hooked nose.

“ _We told you not to come here, Trickster_ ,” a voice booms, from everywhere and nowhere at once. “ _You would do well to heed our warning_.”

“Akechi?” Akira calls frantically, as darkness settles over both of them. “Akechi, are you -- is this--?”

“ _Do not return_ ,” the voice thunders, steadily growing in volume, waves of sound shredding through the table and the walls and Akechi’s own stricken face, leaving only blue light in its place. “ _ **We will not ask again--**_ ”

And Akira wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: “wow i’m emotionally exhausted from finishing my last enormous shuake project, lemme take a break by writing some easy low-maintenance emotionally-vacant smut” 
> 
> also me: “akechi is trapped between dimensions and with akira’s history of visiting psychic spaces in his sleep, he’s the only one with a chance to save him. furthermore, the velvet room is open to all wild cards and if yaldabaoth chose akechi it means that he must have-----” 
> 
> …… RIP my break, hope ya’ll enjoy the ride -_-


	3. The marionette

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Akira starts to get suspicious about the true nature of his dreams.

“Dinner’s on the table,” Akira shouts to Ryuji, after hearing the telltale rattle- _screak_ of the front door.

“I really gotta fix that,” Ryuji mutters to himself, like he does every day.

“I dunno,” Akira disagrees, half-turning to nod hello as Ryuji saunters into the kitchen. “I kinda like it. It’s almost like we can afford a security system.”

Ryuji snorts.

“C’mon,” he says, elbowing Akira right between the shoulder blades. “ _You’re_ our security system. If I even _sneeze_ while you’re sleeping, you’re halfway across the room with your fists up.”

“So sue me,” Akira says, affecting an expression of injured pride. “I’m traumatized.”

“So am I, from that time you knocked me sideways for _getting in my own bed_.”

Akira gives him a sheepish look, and Ryuji ruffles his hair fondly.

“What’s for dinner tonight?” he asks, like he doesn’t know. Akira rolls his eyes.

“What do you think?”

Ryuji shoves him playfully as he swipes a bite from Akira’s plate, and then turns in surprise as Akira dodges neatly out of the way.

“You okay?” he asks, through a mouthful of lukewarm curry. “You seem… weird.”

“Weird how?” Akira asks evasively. He knows how. Normally he’d take the hit and shove Ryuji right back.

“I dunno,” Ryuji says, shrugging. “This is more Ann’s bag, y’know? You just seem… on edge, I guess. Everything okay at work?”

“It’s fine,” Akira says vaguely. “I’m fine. I’m just tired, Ryu. Might go to bed early.”

“Want me to bring you some tea?”

“Not how _you_ make it,” Akira says wryly. The last time he got sick, Ryuji steeped the fancy chamomile he got from Sojiro in _hot seltzer_ , and Akira will never let him forget it. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine, really. Just… thinking about stuff.”

Ryuji looks at him worriedly.

“You wanna sleep in my bed?” he asks, sidling up to Akira to nudge him with his shoulder. “I promise not to get mad if you suplex me.”

Akira bumps Ryuji’s shoulder with his forehead.

“I’m okay,” he says. “Really. Thanks.”

As it happens, Akira _does_ want to sleep in Ryuji’s bed. Morgana’s staying with Futaba this week, and Akira’s always hated sleeping alone. But given the dreams he’s been having lately, it seems unwise. The last thing he wants is to freak out the one person who’s always, _always_ been there for him.

##

It’s not even 8 when Akira closes his eyes. He knows he’s being pathetic, but… In his waking life, Akira never gets to see Akechi again. And for the first time since the engine room, his dreams are actually -- well. Not _good_ , exactly, he thinks, blushing a little. But at least they’re not the violent, grotesque horror shows that he’s grown used to. There’s so little pleasure in his life. Is it so wrong to seek out a little more?

Akira lies awake for a long time before darkness takes him.

##

A few eons later, the dark unfolds; brightens into a familiar blue half-light.

This time, Akira’s actually expecting Akechi. But Akechi has never failed to surprise him. There’s no one here at all. All he sees is an empty cell, dripping and damp and dusty with neglect.

The hair on the back of Akira’s neck stands up an instant before a hand clamps over his mouth, and a pale, slender forearm folds around his throat like a vice.

Akira hasn’t fought in years, but instincts don’t fade overnight. Before he can even process what’s happened, his body springs to life. He thrusts his left elbow backward into his assailant’s gut and whips his right hand over his left shoulder, toward where he hopes his attacker’s nose will be. His fist thuds uselessly off of their skull instead.

“ _Ow_ ,” his assailant hisses, in a high, clear tone that Akira would recognize anywhere.

“Akechi?” he asks incredulously.

“ _Shh_ ,” Akechi hisses back. “Be _quiet_ , you absolute _imbecile_.”

“Why ar--”

And then Akira can’t ask any more questions, because Akechi has thrust the fingers of his right hand into his mouth. Akira briefly considers biting down hard, and decides against it.

Akira already knew that Akechi was strong, but there’s a difference between knowing something and _feeling_ it. Akechi’s left arm is a steel girder clamping his body in place. No matter how Akira struggles and squirms, he can’t move an inch.

Akechi’s fingers are still in his mouth. Tentatively, Akira runs his tongue over them, swallows the spit pooling in his mouth, and then -- impulsively -- sucks on them a little.

Akira’s never sucked anyone off before. He and Ryuji almost hooked up once, before Akira had a panic attack about the prospect of ruining the friendship that held up his entire emotional well-being and Ryuji had to talk him down. Intimacy has always been -- complicated, for Akira.

Akechi’s fingers are warm and pliable in his mouth. The friction of them sliding against the back of his tongue, nudging at the entrance of his throat, stirs a warm tingling in his groin. Akira swallows around them, feels himself shudder.

Akechi’s breathing turns shallow. Clamped tight against his body, Akira can feel Akechi’s cock hardening against the line of his ass. He sucks harder, more vigorously, and feels Akechi tremble through every inch of his form.

“ _S-- stop that_ ,” Akechi hisses into his ear, sounding downright tormented. “You _demon_. Are you insatiable? _Please_ , just -- _hold still, and_ _be quiet_.”

The corners of Akira’s mouth tug back into a wry half-smile, but he relents. Akira goes limp in Akechi’s arms and waits.

A half a minute later, Akechi’s taut muscles relax.

“It’s gone,” he breathes. “For now, anyway.”

No longer bound so tightly in place, Akira peers over his shoulder. Akechi’s face is pale and drawn, but Akira can see the hardness of his erection through his black-and-white-striped pants. Akira looks down at it pointedly and then back up at Akechi, who scowls.

“Do you think of _nothing else_?” he asks irritably. He’s still looking past Akira, fidgety and fearful. Akira follows his gaze. All he sees are the bars of his cell, and the round, empty chamber beyond it.

He glances back toward Akechi, and his brow furrows. It’s odd, sort of, that his subconscious mind would conjure an image of Akechi in the prison uniform of the Velvet Room. It’s not as though he ever saw him in such attire; or ever particularly _wanted_ to, for that matter.

“What are you so afraid of?” he asks curiously. Akechi shoots him a haunted look.

“The puppeteer,” he says tensely, tight-lipped. “The one who pulls the strings.”

Akira gapes at him.

“The what now?”

“The _puppeteer_ ,” Akechi says again, more impatient than before. Then he shakes his head and turns away. “Never mind,” he says irritably. “There’s no point in it. You’re not even here, really, not in any way that matters.”

“I thought it was the other way around,” Akira tells him. Akechi snorts.

“Hard to say,” he concedes, grudgingly.

They eye each other for a minute, neither willing to give ground; and then excitement takes Akira, and he takes a step forward.

“So,” he says, breathlessly. “So this isn’t real.”

“That’s right,” Akechi agrees.

“And nothing we do here counts?”

“Right again,” Akechi confirms, nodding languidly. Akira gives him a wicked smile.

“Then I can do -- anything I want?”

“Mmh,” Akechi breathes, shuddering. “ _Yes_.”

Akira drops to his knees. Akechi frowns.

“Wait,” he says, stiffening. “What do you--”

“ _Please_ , Akechi,” Akira says desperately. “I’ve--”

He swallows.

“The first time we met,” Akira says, quietly. He doesn’t dare meet Akechi’s eyes. “At the studio. You shook my hand, my _left_ hand, and I -- I’d never even had a _crush_ before that, but I-- And the first time you asked me out,” he goes on, unable to finish the thought. “At Penguin Sniper, you bent over the table, so pretty and nimble and sharp, and so brittle, like if I made one wrong move, said one wrong thing, you’d turn on me, obliterate me.”

Akechi just stares at him. Akira shudders.

“I didn’t even know _why_ I was so fucking desperate for you to like me,” he breathes, taut and trembling, still looking away. “I didn’t even know I was _gay_ before that, but I -- couldn’t stop thinking about the sound you might make, if I -- And you were so unhappy, it was so obvious, a _blind_ man could see it, and I -- couldn’t stop thinking about how I could help, how I could make you feel--”

Akechi looks away, trembling.

“ _Please_ ,” Akira says again. He’s openly pleading now. “Please, can I--”

Akechi huffs air through his nose.

“Fine,” he says. His voice is neutral, but Akira can see his hands shaking.

“Are you sure--”

“ _Do it_.”

Akira doesn’t need any more than that. Trembling, he pulls down the waistband of Akechi’s prison scrubs; trembles at the sight of him, hard and erect, familiar and unfamiliar all at once. Akechi’s cock is shorter and slightly thicker than his own. Akira breathes on the head of it and Akechi shudders helplessly, so violently that his legs nearly collapse under him.

“ _Hhh_ ,” Akira breathes, and tentatively, uncertainly, unfurls his tongue and laps at the head of Akechi’s cock.

Akechi makes a sound like he’s been _stabbed_ , high and mewling. Akira glances upward with worry in his eyes but Akechi’s expression is one of absolute bliss, of helpless hunger. Akira can feel a wolfish sort of pleasure stir in his gut as he opens his mouth and wraps his lips tight around Akechi’s shaft and he _swallows_ , swallows again, sucking and licking and stroking with his tongue, and all the while Akechi whimpers pitifully, helplessly, like an animal. When Akira peers up he can see Akechi’s eyes creased shut and his mouth slack with pleasure, and it’s enough to _undo_ him.

“ _Mmmffh_ ,” he moans around the length of him; feels Akechi’s shaft sliding against his tongue, thudding against the back of his throat, warm and thick and solid; and somewhere above him he can hear Akechi muttering:

“I can’t, I-- _nngh, I_ \-- oh my _god_ , Kurusu-kun, I’m going to--”

In his mouth Akira can feel Akechi’s cock shudder, and he gulps helplessly, gulps again, tastes bitter salt and citrus, slick and slippery; gulps again and feels Akechi’s shaft soften.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Akechi mews, helpless; and then looks down at Akira miserably. “I’m sorr--”

“Don’t be,” Akira sighs, breathless, “god, oh my _god_ ,” and even stricken with guilt as he is, Akechi’s mouth twitches.

“Why would you,” he starts to ask, and then stops. Hesitantly, reluctantly, he lifts one hand and runs his fingers through Akira’s curls; shudders again as Akira leans into his touch, pressing his head against Akechi’s palm like a dog. “But you know what I’m--” he starts again, and then gives up. Akechi rakes his nails over Akira’s scalp in earnest, and smiles in spite of himself when Akira presses his head against him, purring.

Akechi sighs.

“Why are you here?” he asks helplessly. “What could possibly be here, for someone like you? Why do you come here at all?”

“To see you,” Akira answers easily, unthinking. Then he hesitates. “What do you mean, _here_?” he asks. It’s a dreamlike space, but…. “Akechi,” he says softly. “This is real, isn’t it?”

Akechi rolls his eyes, shrugs dramatically. He looks utterly exhausted.

“I’ll be damned if _I_ know,” he says miserably. “I can’t even _move_ , much less get my bearings. Not that that’s any different from the rest of my life. I was never the one pulling the strings. For all I know, they’re behind _this_ little spectacle, too,” (nodding at Akira), “and every moment I spend with you, I’m playing right into their hand.”

“ _They_?”

Akechi’s eyes blaze with fury.

“I already _told_ you,” he snarls, shaking his limbs at Akira wildly, frenziedly, as though wrenching at something that only he could see. “ _The ones who pull the strings._ ”

Akira’s eyes narrow.

“Akechi,” he says softly. “What is this place to you?”

“ _What_?” Akechi hisses.

“What is this place to you?” Akira asks again, insistent. “I mean… what does it _look_ like?”

Akechi glares at him, looking hunted; and then the fight goes out of him.

“The same way it looks to you,” he says coldly. “A stage. For their little _puppet show_.”

Akira gapes at him. When he squints at Akechi’s neck, for just a moment, he thinks that he can see something he didn’t see before: slender white threads, like the gossamer silk of a spider’s web, criss-crossing over Akechi’s chest and shoulders; and then gathering at his forearms, braiding together into something more like a _rope_ than a string.

“Akechi,” Akira says breathlessly. “Are you trapped here?”

Akechi barks a laugh: a short, ugly expulsion of sound that has nothing to do with mirth.

“ _Akira_ ,” he shoots back, cruelly. “Are you _blind_ , or are you only a fool? I’ve always been trapped. Since the unfortunate incident of my _birth_ , I’ve been--”

The light shimmers, brightens to a brilliant blinding azure, and Akechi’s eyes go wide.

“They’re coming,” he gasps, actually panting with fear. “You have to hide, they’re coming,” and his limbs jerk horribly; his arms fan out expansively. A bright, courteous smile cracks his face open from ear to ear, and Akechi _leers_ at Akira as his feet lift clear off the ground. “It’s almost time,” he says, through a thicket of white square teeth, “ _for the show to begin--_ ”

\--And Akira wakes up.


	4. The spider's web

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Akira investigates the true nature of his dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok full disclosure, there is no fuckin in this one, just narrative development. it’s the other kind of pwp: Plot Without Porn. stick with me anyway?

It’s the asscrack of dawn when Futaba’s phone blares to life.

“Mrr--reaow?” Morgana yowls, thrashing awake as _Featherman - Go!_ shatters the stillness of night. A few faint tendrils of sunrise slip between the blinds, casting slender bars of brilliance over the foot of the bed.

The girl sitting cross-legged in front of a cluster of monitors doesn’t even flinch. Her noise-canceling headphones are effective enough to drown out Yusuke’s snoring, not to mention any unexpected 4 am phone calls.

Exasperated, Morgana turns to Yusuke for sympathy and finds none. The Phantom Thieves’ token artist is snoring gently, thoroughly exhausted. Morgana can hardly blame him. Yusuke painted tirelessly for 36 hours straight before Futaba finally broke down and slipped a capful of Nyquil into his instant noodles. (“This brand possesses a certain scintillating sweetness!” he told her as he scarfed them down, eyes gleaming with mania. “Such sophisticated flavor!”)

“Is _no one else_ annoyed about this?” Morgana meows grumpily. Dissatisfied with his utter lack of response, he springs across the room onto Futaba’s shoulders and unsheathes his claws.

“Woah, kitty!” she yelps, shaking him off. “I’m kinda in the middle of something! What’s up? Ah -- am I late for class?” she guesses, eyes widening.

“Yeah, you’re late for your 4 am discussion section,” Morgana tells her drily.

“Shit! I knew I was forgetting something, I got -- waiiit a minute,” she cuts in, her eyes narrowing. “I don’t _have_ a 4 am discussion section!”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Morgana grumbles. “Your phone’s ringing.”

“Oh! Can you get it for me?”

Morgana just glares at her, holding up a single (distinctly _thumbless_ ) paw.

“Oh, right,” she says distractedly, brushing her bangs back from her face. And then, raising her voice to be heard over the bright, tinny beats of the Featherman theme song: “Man, but I’ve really gotta get you a decent voice-activated phone, Mona. This one’s a powerhouse, but I can't crack open its accessibility suite without compromising its security.” Inspiration strikes; her eyes gleam with mania. “I wonder if--”

“ _Pick it up_ ,” Morgana hisses.

“Oh, yeah.”

She does.

“Hey, Akira,” she says brightly. “Where’s the fire?”

(Distant, muffled noise.)

“Got it,” she nods, and thrusts the phone toward Morgana. “He wants to talk to you,” she tells him. “I’m gonna go back to work, kay?”

Morgana’s fuzzy head tilts curiously, but he can’t help but purr as he answers. In spite of what he might claim, he’s always happy to stay with Futaba, but Akira’s his partner -- his best friend, till the end of time.

“What’s up, buddy?” he meows into the mouthpiece, bleary but bright. “You miss me so much you can’t sleep? Can’t say I blame you--”

“When we destroyed the Metaverse, did it erase the Velvet Room, too?” Akira asks urgently. He sounds utterly awake. Morgana’s head tilts the other way.

“Uh,” he says. “Why do you ask?”

“ _Just answer the question_.”

“Okay, okay, geez. Uh…” Morgana gives it some thought. “Probably not, I guess,” he mews eventually. “The Velvet Room exists outside of space and time as we know it. I’m not sure it even _can_ be destroyed. You're not the first Wild Card they've summoned, and you won't be the last.”

Through the phone’s speakers, Morgana can hear the breath hiss out of his partner.

“What’s going on?” he meows, more forcefully than before. “Did Igor contact you? Do you need me to come back?”

On the other end, there’s a long, lingering quiet. Morgana hisses his frustration.

“Leader!” he yowls. “Talk to me! Are you okay?”

The silence stretches another moment longer, and then:

“I’m fine,” Akira says tonelessly. “Sorry to scare you. I’m… It can wait. Futaba needs you there.”

“ _Futaba_ has an oversized, understuffed emotional support animal taking up most of her bed,” Morgana says, casting another irritable glare toward the still-snoring Yusuke. “She’ll be fine. If you need me, you have to tell me, okay?”

Another silence, this one less worrying. Akira is thinking about it.

“It can wait,” he answers, at last. “But… Yeah. I need to talk to you. Can you come see me at work tomorrow?”

“You got it.”

##

“So what’s up?” Morgana asks when he arrives, springing onto the counter and landing neatly beside the register. Akira smiles and runs his hand over Morgana, from the soft fuzz of his forehead to the base of his tail.

“Is Futaba okay?” he asks evasively. Morgana glares at him, as if to say, _I see what you’re doing_. Still, he nods.

“It’s never easy,” he says. Futaba’s mother died seven years and three days ago. “She’s doing well, mostly, compared to some years. She’s eating, and she’s sleeping some, and she’s going to class. She’s even making sure Yusuke eats and sleeps!”

Akira whistles, impressed, and then pretends to have been whistling to himself when a customer glances curiously toward him.

“I’m glad to hear it,” he says, more quietly than before. “She always says she’s fine, but -- you know how she is.”

“Yeah,” Morgana says, with a pointed glare. “I know the type. Now will you tell me what’s up already?”

Akira’s shoulders close defensively.

“I’ll tell you everything,” he says miserably. “Just -- promise not to tell Ryuji, okay?”

##

“You saw _who_?” Morgana yowls, so loud that half the coffeeshop turns to stare.

“Sorry,” Akira says sheepishly to the nearest customer. “He’s, uh -- chatty today.” And then to Morgana, more quietly than before: “You heard me.”

“And what makes you think it’s not just a dream?” Morgana mews, with a worried stare. “I know how you -- well.” He doesn’t have to elaborate. They both remember countless nights where Akira woke up sobbing, drenched with sweat, after replaying Akechi’s death again and again and again.

“It feels _different_ ,” Akira tells him desperately. “It’s not like before. In the dreams, he was always just one thing -- a sadistic killer torturing me; or a victim, broken, bleeding, just a kid. Now, though, he’s like he was before. He’s everything at once. He’s hurting and he hurts me and he wants to be hurt; he’s violent and brittle and just as unbreakable as he is _shattered_. It’s… my stupid subconscious could never do him justice before this, but all of a sudden he’s _so_ _real_.”

“Hmm,” Morgana hums, unconvinced. Akira rolls his eyes.

“It’s not just that,” he says, with conviction. “It’s… In the old days, I always knew when the dream was real, you know? It’s not like I never had normal nightmares about Ig-- about Yaldabaoth, I mean. But it felt _different_ when I was really there.”

Morgana’s still frowning. Akira glares at him.

“Look, just -- for a second, pretend you don’t think I’m crazy, okay?”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Morgana agrees easily. “But… It _really_ shouldn’t be possible to visit the Velvet Room uninvited.”

“Well, what if Igor’s not the one who invited me?” Akira asks, only slightly hysterically. “What if it’s Akechi?”

He expected Morgana to dismiss him, but to his surprise, the cat actually considers it.

“Hm,” he mews thoughtfully. “Well. As a purely rhetorical exercise, I suppose that it’s not _impossible_. Akechi’s a Wild Card, so he had access to the Velvet Room once, same as you did. Still,” he adds worriedly. “Why now? And why _you_? Akechi tried to _kill_ you, remember?”

Akira’s retort dies in his throat. How can he explain to Morgana the kind of rapport that he and Akechi shared, before everything went to hell? How can he make Morgana understand that things aren’t as simple as that?

“He tried to save us, too,” he says hollowly, at last. “You know that.”

Morgana shrugs again.

“Regardless,” he says. “I’m coming with you next time.”

“You’re what?”

Morgana glares at him.

“You heard me!” he says emphatically, throwing Akira’s own words in his face. “I was born in the Velvet Room. If there’s really something happening there, I’m your best shot at figuring it out.”

Then, in response to Akira’s helpless, stricken stare: “ _What_?” he meows irritably. “What’s your deal now?”

“Well,” Akira says. He can’t exactly say, _I don’t want you to see me facefuck my dead crush_. “Well, I’m, uh. I’m not sure Igor wants me there.”

Morgana’s furry forehead furrows.

“What do you mean?”

Reluctantly, Akira explains how the dreams always end.

“They asked you to leave _three times_ , and you keep going back?” Morgana yowls, once he’s heard enough. “Do you have a _death wish_?”

“Are they going to kill me?” Akira asks levelly. Morgana shakes his head.

“I don’t know! That’s not the point! How are you even _getting_ there, if they don’t want you?”

Akira purses his lips.

“Mona,” he says. “Has the Velvet Room ever kept a prisoner?”

“A--!” Morgana pauses, thinks about it. “Well,” he says grudgingly. “I suppose we _all_ could’ve prisoners of the Velvet Room, if things had gone differently.”

“What do you mean?”

Morgana stretches languorously.

“I _mean_ ,” he sighs, “when we were fighting the Holy Grail -- when we almost got wished out of existence -- well. If you hadn’t held onto your will of rebellion, I suppose the Thieves could have ended up -- stuck, sort of.”

“Stuck?”

“Between existence and nonexistence,” Morgana finishes, reluctantly. “So long as there was anyone alive holding onto your memory, you wouldn’t vanish; but without your own will of rebellion, you couldn’t _exist_ , either. A kind of a limbo state.”

“Limbo,” Akira breathes. Morgana’s face furrows.

“You’re not gonna do anything stupid, are you?” he meows noisily. “I shouldn’t have to remind you that Igor is a _god_. If he gave you a warning, you should _listen_.”

“Yeah, well,” Akira says, grinning in spite of himself. “I’ve been warned by gods before.”

“Excuse me?” asks the customer approaching the counter. Akira shakes himself off.

“Just talking to my cat!” he says, with so disarming a sheepish smile that the man can’t help but smile back. Morgana rolls his eyes. “Sorry about that, sir. What can I get you?”

“Are we _really_ gonna keep this a secret?” Morgana mews after the guy walks away, more quietly than before. Akira shrugs.

“It’s not like they’ve got any experience with the Velvet Room,” he says. “That was mostly my thing, and yours. I tried to tell them about Igor a dozen times, back when we were still fighting, and they always just stared at me like I’d grown a second head.”

“Yeah, cause you dropped weird hints about long-nosed men instead of actually explaining!”

Akira rolls his eyes.

“Still,” he sighs. “Won’t it just worry them for no reason?”

“No,” Morgana shoots back, “it’ll worry them for a _good_ reason! You know they’d want to know.”

“I’ll think about it,” Akira sighs. “In the meantime, what’s the cost of your silence? Name your price.” Morgana licks his lips and considers it.

“A cup of cream, and I keep my mouth shut. _For now_ ,” he adds, with a pointed glare. Akira thrusts one hand out. Morgana takes it, and Akira gives his little paw a gentle shake.

“It’s a deal.”


	5. The man who pulls the strings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Akira confronts Akechi about the nature of his imprisonment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the climax babeyy! it's all over after this!! prepare yourself for a moderately spooky time!!!

“Okay,” Morgana mews bossily. “Let’s go over this one more time.”

Akira flops back on his bed, exhausted.

“Monaaaa,” he groans. “I’m _tired_! Anyway, it’s not that complicated! I just have to envision you there, right?”

“That’s a simplification,” Morgana says, nodding seriously, “but… more or less, yes. Like the Metaverse, the Velvet Room is psychospatial. That means that it’s one’s perception — one’s _expectation_ — that gives it shape. If you expect, with full confidence, to find me there, then that’s where I’ll be! ...I think.”

Akira gives him a look.

“What?” Morgana says defensively. “It’s been a while!”

“I didn’t say anything,” Akira tells him innocently. “So I’ll get there and call you, and then what?”

“Then I’ll talk to Akechi,” Morgana says calmly. Akira gives him another bug-eyed stare. “ _What_?” Morgana meows again, more irritably this time.

“And you think that’ll help?” Akira asks, as neutrally as he can manage. Morgana’s tail puffs up.

“Or I’ll talk to Igor, or whoever! I just — Just let me keep an eye on you, okay?”

“Yes, dad,” Akira grumbles. “Can I go to bed yet?”

“Fine,” Morgana meows grumpily. “But if you’re gone too long and you don’t open a door for me, I’m getting Ryuji to wake you up with his _fists_.”

“Fine,” Akira sighs. “Good _night_ , Morgana.”

Morgana purrs, stretches out over Akira’s belly.

“G’night, Akira.”

##

When Akira opens his eyes, Akechi is waiting for him.

 _Morgana_ , he thinks hastily, as ordered. Akira closes his eyes and tries to summon the cat in his mind’s eye: blue eyes, needle-tip paws, the way his coat gets extra floofy around his chest.

“Kurusu-kun,” Akechi says softly, and Akira’s eyes snap open. Akechi is watching him warily, distrustfully, like a fox with its hackles up. “You came back.”

“Of course I did,” Akira tells him, surprised. _Come on_ , he tells himself, _Morgana! Bossy and brash, all that sass in such a small package_. _Get over here, Morgana._

“I…” Akechi says, and Akira’s attention swings back to him. “...did not think that you would,” he concludes at last, in a neutral tone. Akira stares.

“What?” he asks, startled into giving Akechi his full attention. _Sorry, Morgana_ , he thinks, _just let me just take care of this first_. “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I?”

Akechi lifts one shoulder.

“Well,” he says, with only a trace of bitterness. “Once you’d deduced that I… That this place might be _more_ than a depraved manifestation of your own repressed id, I expected that you’d wash your hands of it.”

Akira gapes at him.

“ _Why_?” he asks, at last. Akechi sneers.

“Because of that flimsy conscience of yours,” he says contemptuously. “This place may have served you well enough as a — a form of _stress relief_ , before. But I’d hardly expect you to return to vent your anger once you knew that the object of your ire was _real_.”

“The object of…” Akira plays that back, takes a moment to decipher it. “You think I was just coming here to let off steam?”

“That much would be hard to deny,” Akechi says archly, giving Akira a suggestive leer. In his mind’s eye, Akira sees himself shoving Akechi against the wall of the safe room hard enough to make his teeth clack together; sees himself _choking_ his rival till he gasped and drooled. Christ, Akira _spat_ on Akechi, right on his face! Not some dreamed-up, ill-concocted fantasy but _Goro Akechi_ , the _actual_ Akechi. Akira was so caught up in figuring out how to save him that he forgot to be _totally fucking mortified_.

“I was surprised to learn how much violence roiled beneath your glassy exterior, Kurusu-kun,” Akechi drawls, as Akira squirms with shame. “A nice surprise, to be sure. Still. Once you discovered the truth, I presumed that you’d sweep all that _unsavory emotion_ back into whatever vault you hide it in, by light of day. And yet you have returned to me,” he purrs, stalking forward. “Have you come to punish me for my crimes? I’ve done terrible things, Kurusu-kun,” he adds, with a lascivious gleam. “If you hope to discipline me, well… It might take you all night.”

“No,” Akira says, breathless, resolutely ignoring the stirring in his groin. Akechi raises an eyebrow.

“No?” he echoes.

“No,” Akira says again, with more conviction this time. “I’m… Not here to hurt you, Akechi. I’m here to save you.”

Akechi’s face goes blank as he processes that. Silence hangs between them, stretched out taut as a rubber band. At last, Akechi breaks it.

“Why?” he demands. Akira closes his eyes, rakes his fingers through his curls.

“Why do you think?” he shoots back. “Maybe because you’ve already suffered enough? Because no one deserves to spend eternity in some kind of fucky cognitive prison? Because you’re my _friend_ , and I care about you?”

As Akira speaks, Akechi just stares, seemingly without comprehension. At that last sentence, though, his face turns hard.

“I knew you were a masochist,” he says coldly, “and a fool, but I didn’t know you had a _death wish_.”

“I don’t—”

“You know what I am,” Akechi snarls. “You know what I do — what I’ll _always_ do. I’m not _like_ you, Kurusu-kun. I’m not a hero, or a victim to be saved. I’m not even a man,” he spits, with venom. “I’m a _puppet_.”

_Click._

A spotlight flares to life, casting a perfect circle of brilliant white over Akechi. Akechi’s pupils contract to pinpoints; his lips peel back, contorting into a horrible grin.

“Ah,” he says manically, licking his lips. “Right on time. You’re just in time, Kurusu-kun, for today’s show.”

“Uh,” Akira says, eyes darting left and right. _Morgana, Morgana, Morgana_ , he thinks frantically, too late. _Now would be a great time for you to show up;_ _tuxedo cat with a little mask, all that brass in such a small package; you can still show up right in the nick of time, Mor—_

A strange ticking sound, like clockwork, catches his ear. Akira’s attention flicks outward. What he sees fills him with dread.

Two figures have materialized on Akechi’s left and right.

The twins are recognizable, and also not. Gone are the clipboard and nightstick and the silly little hats — these attendants wear boxy, ill-fitting funereal suits, each adorned with a bright blue bowtie. Their silver hair is still silver, but it’s no longer hair: Justine’s neat braid and Caroline’s twin buns are twisted out of thick, greasy strands of ash-grey yarn. Gone are Justine’s bright, curious gaze and Caroline’s proud, scornful one. The girls stare sightlessly forward, their yellow eyes replaced by two dull plastic buttons.

Justine’s mouth clacks open mechanically, like a nutcracker’s jointed jaw. The voice that issues forth is deep and reverberant, and its words don’t quite sync up with the insectile clicking of her wooden teeth.

“Today’s show will be an old favorite,” she says, or someone says through her. The gravelly, reverberant tone sounds alarmingly like the voice of that false Igor. ( _But that’s impossible_ , Akira thinks desperately. _Yaldabaoth is dead_. _I killed him._ )

Caroline’s hands jerk forward and then clap together with a wood-on-wood _thnk_.

“The Detective Prince will encore his most popular performance,” she announces, and recognition shudders through Akira. He would know that voice anywhere — he heard it echo through Yongen for months. That’s _Shido’s_ voice.

As one, the twins slide forward smoothly, as though on a track. As one, their jointed jaws fall open.

“Put your hands together,” those deep, distant voices rumble, in perfect unison, “for our finest composition: the humiliating defeat of the leader of the Phantom Thieves!”

From the surrounding darkness, someone begins to clap. They’re joined by another, and another, and another, until the entire stage _shakes_ with the force of their anticipation, their dumb, animal adulation. Akira looks around wildly, but the stage lights are too bright, too blinding. All he can see is Akechi suspended above him, bare feet dangling over open air, strung up by the thick silvery ropes wound tightly around his neck and shoulders, his wrists and elbows and knees and ankles.

“Akechi,” Akira says desperately, but Akechi is already creaking into motion. His left arm twists painfully downward to accept what Caroline is lifting toward him: a plastic sword, its paint peeling and dull; clearly a stage prop except for the jagged teeth of its serrated edge, which look all too real.

“Akechi!” Akira shouts again. Even through that horrible, artificial smile, he can see Akechi’s eyes swivel toward him. Through gleefully gritted teeth, Akechi manages to utter one word, guttural and strained:

“ _Run_.”

What else can he do?

Akira runs.

Akira throws himself over the edge of the spotlit stage, into the thunderous dark below. He lands gracelessly, off-balance; manages to throw his weight forward, to turn his fall into a roll and turn that roll into momentum. The applause is everywhere, it’s _deafening_ , but Akira can’t see anyone clapping — there’s only rows and rows of empty chairs, blue velvet upholstery as far as the eye can see. He surges past them, running as fast as he can afford to over uneven footing in brackish dark.

Akira pauses, sucks in a breath.

When he peers over his shoulder, he can see Akechi as clearly as ever, spotlight to brilliance, the most visible thing in the room. Akechi’s limbs jerk spasmodically as he surges forward, yanked this way and that by the invisible hand of the puppetmaster, the man who pulls the strings.

The twins are gone, Akira realizes, with horror. Akechi is alone in the spotlight. That means they could be _anywhere_.

As quiet as he can manage, Akira scurries forward, clambering over theater seats and cursing under his breath every time his sneaker squeaks against the arm of a chair.

He’s making progress. Akechi’s movement is slow and halting; each jerking step that he takes is the result of a dozen different strings moving in tandem, bending and folding his joints like a spider’s legs, while Akira is free to leap and vault and scramble. He’s moving so quickly that he barely registers the subtle changes in his surroundings — ragged holes where the blue velvet carpet has molded away, baring smooth damp stone beneath; clusters of metal bars thrusting up from the earth like some kind of cold, inorganic vegetation.

He _does_ notice, however, when he trips over a small, humanoid figure. Squinting through the dark, he catches a glimpse of blue fabric and scrabbles away on his back like a crab.

“Trickster?” a familiar voice asks, its tone shrill and demanding. Akira gasps for breath, swallows, exhales.

“...Caroline?” he dares to ask. The figure stomps forward, gives the nearest chair an irritable _thwack_ with her baton.

“You should _not_ be here, Trickster!” she says disapprovingly. “Didn’t we already warn you?”

“I’m afraid that my sister is right,” says another (blissfully-familiar) voice, breathier in tone, and Justine steps out of the shadows. “This Room is no longer safe for you. The mind that shapes this space now is volatile, and dangerous.”

“I don’t understand!” Akira whispers to them, frantic. “I thought we got rid of Yaldabaoth!”

“Yaldabaoth?” Caroline repeats, incredulous. “What do _they_ have to do with this?”

“Ah,” Justine says gently. “A misunderstanding. Trickster, the Velvet Room’s host does not give it its shape. That honor goes to its guest.”

“This is _my_ fault?” he sputters, incredulous. Justine shakes her head serenely.

“No, Trickster,” she says patiently. “You are no longer our guest.”

Realization strikes.

“Goro,” Akira breathes. Morgana’s words flash through his mind. The Velvet Room is _psychospatial_ , he said: shaped by expectation and perception. “You’re telling me Akechi’s doing this to _himself_?”

“We’re telling you to _get out_!” Caroline says aggressively. “Before it’s too late!”

“Caroline,” Justine says gently. “Give the Trickster your baton.”

“What? It’s mine!”

“Caroline,” Justine says again, even more patiently, and Caroline rolls her eyes.

“Ugh! _Fine_ ,” she grumbles, thrusting her nightstick toward him. “You can have it. But you’d better be grateful, _inmate_.”

“Our guest draws near,” Justine says calmly, as Akira grabs for the weapon. “His convictions are strong — stronger even than yours, Trickster. You cannot save him,” she says sadly, kindly. “Not here; not when he believes himself beyond saving.”

“Just get out of here!” Caroline growls.

“We can show you the way home,” Justine agrees.

“ _No_ ,” Akira says urgently. Both attendants turn to stare.

“ _Excuse_ me?” Caroline demands.

“No! If he’s doing this to himself, then that’s — that’s all the more reason to—” He breaks off, starts over. “I watched him destroy himself once,” he says, his voice steely. “I _won’t_ let him do it again.”

“Then you will perish,” Justine says, but this time there’s something under her breathy tone — a gravelly timbre, like an echo.

Akira looks down at her, and all hope drains from his face. Justine’s head snaps back in a single, abrupt motion. In the place of her bright amber eye, there is only a glassy, mustard-yellow button.

Light floods the space, filling his vision with blooms of red and white. Distant applause shatters the quiet, swelling steadily into an ominous, thunderous din. Akira turns around in time to see a long-limbed, slender figure jerk into the light. At first glance, it looks as though he’s wearing his white suit, Robin’s suit. But when Akira looks closer, he can see that it’s only a cheap imitation: thin, gauzey cotton, with all that gold detailwork crudely painted on.

“Akira!” Akechi cries, his face a harlequin mask of lurid, electrifying pleasure. “You missed your cue!”

The rope around Akechi’s left knee jerks, forcing one long leg to _snap_ forward. Then it wrenches downward, planting Akechi’s foot so hard against the floor that Akira can hear his ankle _crunch_.

“Did you forget your lines?” the horrible facsimile of Akechi asks, with mock concern. “But you have the easy part! All _you_ have to do is _die_.”

The spotlight shines off the tangle of threads that crisscross through the space, chaotic and geometric as a spider’s web. The rope around Akechi’s left arm _twangs_ and he surges forward, swinging for Akira with murderous intent. Akira wraps both hands around Caroline’s baton and thrusts it upward; Akechi’s blade bounces off it with a metallic _clang_.

“Ohh, you’re going off-book, are you?” Akechi asks maniacally. “I was never one for _improvisation_ , myself.”

He swings again. This time Akira ducks under the blow, tumbling backward and away.

“Akechi,” he says desperately, “ _please_ stop.”

Akechi _snarls_ at him.

“Don’t you think I wish I _could_?” he growls, swinging at Akira again and again in short, stunted little thrusts, like he’s chopping wood. “Don’t you know I don’t have any choice?”

“Of course you have a choice!” Akira tells him. Akechi bares his teeth.

“I’ve _never_ had a choice,” he hisses, bending at the waist to swipe at Akira’s legs; Akira jumps over the blade. “Everything I ever did, every little act of rebellion, each effort I swore was mine and mine alone — all along, it was only ever what _he_ wanted. Nothing was ever mine.”

“That’s not _true_!” Akira denies, breathless. “Or — even if you _did_ do what he wanted, you still had a choice.”

“No, no, _no_ ,” Akechi roars, “I _didn’t_ , he _made_ me—”

“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met!” Akira tells him furiously. “ _You_ choose what you do! You chose your path, just like _you_ chose to kill me.”

“I didn’t,” Akechi snarls. He _snaps_ at Akira, teeth clacking together like a rabid dog. “I didn’t want to— He _made_ me—”

“You didn’t want to,” Akira agrees, dodging under Akechi’s arm and ducking behind him, “but you did.”

“No,” Akechi growls, a nasal note creeping into his voice, “ _no_ , I was — only a tool, I’ve never — never got to choose _anything_ , never had that right—”

“You _did_!” Akira shouts, close behind him. He shoves Akechi forward, slams Caroline’s baton against his assailant’s sword hand, swings again and again till he realizes that Akechi’s broken fingers aren’t folded around the hilt at all — the sword is fastened to another string, bound tight to Akechi’s open palm.

The ropes _twang_ again and Akechi whirls, blade-first. Akira snarls his frustration, drops the baton and _slaps_ him clean in the face. Akechi gapes at him, astounded, and for just a moment, the ropes go slack.

“ _You’re_ in control, you dumb fucking _bastard_ ,” Akira snarls, inches from his face; and he kisses him.

Akira kisses him fiercely, furiously. Akira bites him, sucks on his lip, pulls away to headbutt him _hard_ , right in the fucking face, and then goes back in for more; tastes metal as he runs his tongue over Akechi’s stupid bleeding mouth. Akira draws back for breath and glares down at Akechi’s all-too-visible erection, clearly outlined through the thin fabric of his suit.

“You think your little puppetmaster made you do _that_?” he asks, derisive; and Akechi actually blushes. “It wants you to kill me and you can’t even do _that_ because you’re too fucking _horny_. You think that’s what _they_ want? _You’re_ calling the shots here,” he says furiously. “This is _your_ body, and _your_ head, and we’re in _your_ Velvet Room, and _you’re_ in control.”

“I—” Akechi is frozen in place. For a moment, Akira actually feels hopeful.

And then:

“ _Boy_ ,” growls a familiar gravelly voice (or possibly two voices), from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Out of the darkness that rings their little stage, a stooped silhouette with a long, hooked nose stomps into the clearing. Each of its arms ends in six wizened fingers, which whiten and narrow at their tips, tapering into long, fibrous threads which stream outward to disappear into the tangled web that surrounds them.

Igor — or whatever this monstrous thing is, Yaldabaoth and Shido and Igor all wrapped into one; the shitty adult to end all shitty adults — leers at Akechi.

“ _Boy_ ,” it says coldly, its tone high and derisive and gravelly and dark all at once, like every fucking all-powerful megalomaniac who ever pushed Goro around. “ _It is time for the climax,_ ” it says cruelly, demandingly. “ _It has already been written. It is not your fault,_ ” it goes on, mockingly, baring pointed teeth in a horrible imitation of understanding. “ _This is simply what comes to pass. It is what they’ve all been waiting for_ ,” it sighs, and now the applause rises to a fever pitch — so deafeningly, dizzyingly loud that by all rights it should drown out every other voice in the room, but Yalda/shido’s reverberant drawl cuts through it like a hot knife through flesh. “ _Now,_ ” it says, boredly. _“Kill him._ ”

Akira stares at Akechi.

Akira could get away. The tangled web of strings that twang and hum around them are densely woven, but Akira could slip through the cracks, he’s sure of it. But… Akechi couldn’t. The ropes that bind him are too tight — tight enough to cut off the flow of his blood; to leave his limbs yellow-white and deadened. Akira can get away, but only if he flees alone.

He’ll do it if he must, but… not yet.

“I don’t,” Akechi says leadenly, to the Igor thing, and Akira looks up in shock. “...want to,” he finishes, sullen.

Yalda/shido laughs.

“ _If I wished to know what you wanted, I would have asked_ ,” it says cruelly. “ _Your desire has no relevance here. This is what will happen. **Kill him**_.”

“I don’t _want_ to,” Akechi mutters again, even quieter than before. Yalda/shido’s face twists, at last, with anger.

“ _There is no choice to make_ ,” it snarls. Akechi glowers at it.

“Why don’t _you_ do it, then?” he asks sullenly. “If you’re so powerful.”

“ _It is you who kills him!_ ” Yalda/shido roars. “ _It is your fate, as this is mine._ ”

“Don’t want to,” Akechi mutters, under his breath, and Yalda/shido _screams_.

“ _You will do what you must_ ,” it wails, discordant and wild and so blazingly loud that it sets all the threads in the web humming like guitar strings. The thing that was once called Igor raises both arms and flicks its horrible, ropy digits forward. It presses two fingers together and _twists_ , and Akechi’s sword arm surges upward.

Akechi’s face hardens.

“I _won’t_ ,” he says venomously, and _yanks_ his arm back down — and to Akira’s astoundment, the Igor-thing’s fingers twist back into place, bending backward with a horrible _snap_ ; and Yalda/shido wails again.

Akechi’s eyes narrow.

“I understand,” he says softly. “You _needed_ me.”

“ _I never did_ ,” the Velvet Room’s warden says frantically. “ _You were my plaything, only a tool_ —”

“You needed to use me,” Akechi says, slowly, “because you were nothing without me. Weak. _Helpless_. Without a champion, you were _nothing_.”

“ _No_ ,” it gasps, frantic, “ _you are the one who was nothing — only a vehicle for my will, to do my bidding_ —”

“I don’t think so,” Akechi says quietly, and when he _wrenches_ both arms forward, the force of it lifts Yalda/shido clear off the ground. The keeper of the Velvet Room dangles from his fingertips, wizened feet kicking helplessly in empty air. “I think that perhaps I have… drawn some preemptive conclusions, before assessing all of the facts.”

“ _No_ ,” snivels the puppetmaster, “ _no, no, you are no one’s but mine, you have no_ —”

“I am _no one’s_ ,” Akechi snarls, white-knuckled and sure and absolutely the wildest, most beautiful thing that Akira has ever seen. “I am _no one’s_ plaything. My will is _mine_ ; my fate, my own. _No one_ will control me again.”

Akira smells smoke.

A slender tongue of blue flame curls at Akechi’s ankle — ripples up his shin, caresses his hip, races hungrily up his chest. The webbing that holds him is all too flammable. For a moment Akira can see it all, an intricate network of brilliant blazing orange filling the air around them; and then it turns to ash and falls away, forgotten.

In the center of it all stands Akechi, striped from head to toe in indigo and graphite, head shrouded in silver, hooked spines curving back from his temples like ram's horns, his eyes twin slivers of crimson.

“Hmh,” he snorts, contemptuous — and then he can’t say anything more because Akira has thrown himself onto him, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the unforgiving steel of his helm, kissing him for all that he’s worth.

Akira breaks away, breathless.

“Akechi,” he says, adoringly, “ _you did it_!”

Akechi glares at him, caught between derision and confusion.

“Ah,” he says uncertainly. “Ah — really, the greatest humiliation is that I had not done so already; that I went so—”

“ _Akechi_!” Akira shouts, and he cuts off whatever self-deprecating nonsense Akechi was about to spout with another kiss.

This time, when he breaks away, Akechi is actually smiling, and it’s enough to make Akira fucking _high_.

“I—” Akechi starts to say, but he’s cut off again, this time by a familiar nasal tone.

“Trickster!” Igor says cordially. Akechi trips backward, folds into a defensive crouch; but Igor holds up his (normal, five-fingered, rope-free) hands in peace.

“I did not think that I should see _your_ face again,” Igor says to Akira, companionably.

“Uh,” Akira says. “Well. Shouldn’t have held my friend captive, then.”

Igor smiles.

“Your friend was his own captor,” he says, cheerfully enough. “As you well know. And ours, as it so happens. But that is in the past. Now we must move toward the future. Lavenza will show you the way.”

“Uh,” Akira says again, reaching for Akechi’s arm to give it a comforting squeeze. Akechi looks toward him, frantic, and Akira tries to communicate ‘ _I swear to christ I will explain everything once we’re out of this hellhole’_ with only his eyes. “...Thanks,” he says to Igor, for lack of anything better to say.

“Be well, Trickster,” Igor says, and vanishes.

“Thank you for your service,” says a small, high voice somewhere near his elbow. Akechi trips away again, but it’s only Lavenza, back in her true form. “Each Wild Card brings their own subjective perception to the Velvet Room. We are well acclimated to such changes, of course, but this has been a, ah… Particularly exhausting manifestation.”

Akira snorts. Lavenza gives him a pointed stare.

“Do not feel overly righteous,” she says primly. “ _Your_ perception called me to serve as the merciless warden of a cold, altogether _damp_ prison. If I may assume the manner of the blunter half of my soul,” she says politely; and then her tone hardens, affecting Caroline’s shrill hostility: “You Wild Cards are a bunch of freaks.”

Akira sputters. Akechi gives him a wry stare.

“Now,” Lavenza says serenely. “I will show you the way home. Give me your hand, Trickster.”

Akira obeys and then, impulsively, offers his other hand to Akechi. Akechi scoffs, but he takes it. The slick fabric of his dark suit is cool against Akira’s palm.

“Be well, Trickster,” Lavenza says faintly, even as the space around them begins to shimmer and fade. “And be well, champion of a dead god. Hold fast to your will of rebellion. Fate does not often offer a _third_ chance.”

##

Akira sits up, gasps for breath.

“Akira!” Morgana howls.

“Akira!” Ryuji shouts.

“Akira!” Ann wails, apparently _sobbing_.

“Ffh,” Akira mutters, blearily. “Hh… Guys?”

“You wouldn’t wake up!” Ann wails. “And Morgana said—”

“—the stupid cat said you were on some _Metaverse_ mission,” Ryuji says frantically, “and that you were _compromised_ , and—”

“—the door never opened!” Morgana is yowling. “And you wouldn’t wake _up_ , and I had to— What was I supposed to do!? I—”

“Ah,” says a new voice, high and clear and uncertain and startlingly close. “I, ah… Kurusu-kun?”

Akira’s heart fucking stops.

“Akechi?” he asks, wonderingly, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Morgana is standing on his chest, his furry face inches from Akira’s own. Behind him, Ryuji is kneeling over him, one knee planted on either side of Akira’s hips. On his left, Ann is perched on the side of the bed, her face drenched with tears. And on his right, pressed between him and the wall, his fingers still interlaced with Akira’s own, is…

“Akechi?” Ryuji chokes, incredulous.

“ _Akechi_?” Ann gasps, breathless.

“Akechi??” Morgana yowls, disbelieving.

“ _Akechi_!” Akira shouts, giddily, gladly, “oh my god, Akechi, it—”

Akechi is subtly trying to pry his hand free from Akira’s; Akira clamps his fingers in place even harder.

“I can’t fucking _believe_ that worked, oh my _god_ , Akechi, you’re— Oh my _god_ ,” Akira laughs, and he’s not at _all_ surprised to find himself crying, coming undone in a pile of bodies that includes the one person he wished most fiercely to save, and never could. “Akechi!” he wails, starting to sob in earnest; and now Ann and Ryuji are staring at him almost as disbelievingly as they stared at the _dead man_ who appeared in his bed, because Akira _never_ just bursts into tears.

“Oh, my god,” Akechi mutters, obviously mortified. He reaches to cover his face with his hands but, after failing to disentangle Akira’s hand from his own, settles for bringing both of their hands to his temples. “This is — for _god’s sake_ , Kurusu-kun.”

“Just give me a minute,” Akira snivels, overwhelmed and overwrought and over the fucking _moon_. “Just — everyone back off, okay? _Except you_ ,” he adds, fiercely, to Akechi, who’d begun to pull away again. “I’ll explain everything,” he adds, “I promise, guys, just… give me a minute. Okay?”

Ryuji shuffles off of him, shooting a reproachful, hangdog stare over his shoulder. After a moment, Ann stands too, still sniffling. Morgana is the last to move.

“You were supposed to take me _with_ you,” he mews grumpily. “You stupid, self-sacrificing _ape_. But fine. We’ll give you a minute. But you’d better explain after!”

“Gladly,” Akira says, through his tears. “Anything you like. I love you.”

“Love you too, _moron_ ,” Morgana hisses. He pads out after the others and at last, it’s just Akira and Akechi.

Akira turns to stare at Goro Akechi, in _his bed_ , warm and rueful and embarrassed and undeniably alive. Akechi pushes himself up on his elbows, presses his back to the wall and glares at him, _dares_ him to say something embarrassing.

“You look well, Kurusu-kun,” Akechi says stiffly, at last. “I, ah… Like what you’ve done to your hair.”

Akira chokes on his own sentiment.

“Well, you look like shit,” he manages eventually. Akechi snorts.

“Months in a cognitive prison will do that, I suppose,” he says drily, but there’s a note of something playful behind it.

“Years,” Akira snivels, and Akechi’s eyebrow twitches.

“Goodness,” he says, for lack of anything better. “I suppose there’s a good deal I’ll need to catch up on. So long as your friends in the other room haven’t called the police already, that is.”

“I’ll _kill_ them before they do,” Akira vows, and Akechi smirks.

“Akira-kun,” Akechi says softly, and Akira chokes again. He can feel Akechi’s hand against his own. Softly, barely perceptibly, Akechi squeezes.

“Uh huh?” Akira says wetly.

Akechi rolls his eyes, looks away.

“Thank you,” he says gruffly, to the wall. “For. You know. Coming back for me.”

In all his life, Akira’s never been so fucking happy.

“Always,” he manages. “I—” He coughs, swallows that particular sentiment. “—I’m glad you’re back,” he says instead.

Akechi clears his throat.

“Come on then,” he sighs. “I suppose we owe an explanation to your little band of rebels.”

He pushes himself to his feet, straightens his collar, fixes his hair as though everything were ordinary, and he didn’t just _come back from the dead_. But Akira can’t help but notice that even as Akechi preens and primps and readies himself for the outside world, still, he doesn’t let go of Akira’s hand.

Akira grins.

“Yeah,” he agrees, joyfully, running his free hand through his own tousled hair. “Lead the way,” he tells Akechi warmly. “I’m with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eeep i hope that felt sufficiently exciting & not overly predictable! it's my first time writing a "mystery" like this so i'm, y'know, teaching myself suspense/dramatic tension on the fly 🦋
> 
> sorry we took a hard left turn away from smut lmao, i just got too hooked on this lil mystery & couldn't figure out how to pivot back toward the sexy stuff without it feeling forced. hope you enjoyed it anyway!
> 
> PS thanks for being so nice to me after that last chapter you guys!! i had enough free time this week to either reply to everyone’s nice comments OR finish the story, and I figured ya’ll would probably prefer the latter. but I read all of em giddily and I really appreciate all your kind words!! 💙💚💛


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